


Keep My Head From Going Under

by idrilhadhafang



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Conflicted Kylo Ren, Conflicted Poe Dameron, Fix-It, Guilty Kylo Ren, Hallucinations, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Redemption, M/M, Past Torture, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Reunited and It Feels So Good, ambiguous situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23386003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: Events post-Crait take a different turn.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Kylo Ren
Kudos: 9
Collections: Darkpilot Fix-Its, The_Multishipper_Post_TROS_Happy_Place_Collection, Trope Bingo: Round Fourteen





	Keep My Head From Going Under

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Fix-It Fic
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> Author’s Notes: Title from “Bruises” by Lewis Capaldi.

He should have had everything he wanted, becoming Supreme Leader of the First Order. Instead, he felt, it was like he’d lost everything. The girl wasn’t the only one, though it did feel like he had lost a friend. Another one.   
  
But there was his family. His friends. Poe.   
  
He felt everything, and Kylo felt like he would possibly collapse.   
  
***  
  
In his hallucinations, his demons seemed to shapeshift, to change faces. His father was one example — ever forgiving, as open and accepting as he was on the bridge the day that Kylo killed him.   
  
Ren was another face that his demons took. _“Honestly, kid, I’m disappointed. I thought I was saving you from the life your uncle gave you, and you kriffed it up.”_  
  
Voe. _“How could you, Ben? Your own father. Your own uncle. I thought you had your limits.”_  
  
Tai. _“I tried to save you, Ben. I’m sorry.”_  
  
And then there was Poe.   
  
_“How could you do this to me, Ben?”_ Always in the form of that battered, deceptively fragile-looking man in the interrogation room. _“I searched the galaxy for you...”_  
  
Kylo drew on the pain to strengthen his meditation. To get angrier. In one of their telepathic conversations, those carried out without Ren’s mask, Kylo remembered Ren saying that pain only made users of the Dark Side stronger. “And that served you so well when my uncle beat you back,” Ben had snarked, which Ren had taken in stride. But now Kylo understood.   
  
***  
  
The hallucinations got worse. Kylo could only hope that people like Hux couldn’t hear him. Or, for that matter, the Knights of Ren, who now served as his sort of Praetorian Guard. They shapeshifted, they bombarded...Kylo almost envied people like Palpatine. He probably didn’t have to worry about having a conscience. Having regrets that assailed him at night.   
  
And Poe...  
  
He hadn’t wanted to hurt Poe. Snoke had made him, but did it matter why Kylo had done it? Especially when it had become pointless? Luke had gotten the better of him in the end.   
  
"Is this a new trick of Snoke’s?” Kylo said. The foul beast was slain, wasn’t he? Then again, somehow the Bond with the scavenger had been active when she’d left him behind —  
  
 _“It’s not,“_ Poe’s hallucination said. _“Maybe your mind’s telling you that you’re on the wrong path.”_  
  
“I’m not,” Kylo said.   
  
_“You’re certainly not happy there,”_ Poe’s hallucination said.   
  
“No one on the Dark Side’s been happy there. Except the Emperor.”  
  
 _“A sign you’re on the wrong path for sure.”_  
  
“It doesn’t matter." He was already clinging to the last, feeble scraps of his resolve. His easily tattered resolve, he couldn’t help but think.   
  
_“Why are you here?”_  
  
Kylo swallowed. “I was on the wrong path before,” he said. “Forced into it. Never again.”  
  
 _“And this is any better?”_  
  
“You’re surprised that Leia Organa’s not a saint?”  
  
The Poe hallucination wavered. A sign it was all in Kylo’s head for sure, Kylo thought — after all, if Poe was actually real, he would have had a more compelling argument than just silence.   
  
“She abandoned me,” Kylo said. “Multiple times. And she wasn’t there when I was being invaded mentally night after night. She abandoned me and she’s abandoned me now. I owe this scow nothing.”  
  
 _“She loves you.”_  
  
“A long time ago.” Kylo said.   
  
_“You think Snoke cared about you then? Is that who you think loved you?”_  
  
"No.” Kylo sighed as he spoke. “I’m alone in the universe. And if you don’t hate me after what I did to you, and other things you know I did...you’ll hate me if you knew of other things I did. What I plan to do.”  
  
 _"Then stop.”_  
  
Kylo sighed again. “It’s too late.” He thought back to the bridge where he’d killed his father.   
  
_“It doesn’t have to be.”_  
  
Poe was gone. Slipped through Kylo’s fingers, all too easily.  
  
Sleep. Sleep could help. Yes, sleep...  
  
***  
  
His nightmares were busy. Shapeshifting monsters, seeming to surround him. In his nightmares, he sliced through the visions, only for them to multiply, manifest again.   
  
In his nightmares, he lost Han Solo, and Poe, and Tai, and others, over and over again.   
  
And waking, he only wanted to be free of the pain.   
  
***  
  
It was later, a year after the battle of Crait, that he left the First Order. It felt like a twisted sort of mask, a façade, and eventually, Kylo had simply broken.   
  
Leaving the First Order was already terrifying. There was no other way of putting it. Kylo wished that he could say that it wasn’t terrifying. That redemption didn’t already feel like taking your first steps when you’d been unable to walk for quite some time.   
  
But he could do it. It was more than worth it. Even though he was scared. Even though it was a lot like, for that matter, recovering from an illness or an injury. Kylo didn’t know if it really counted, considering that he had hurt people. Killed people. He’d tortured, taken lives, and for what? Because Snoke told him to? Because he wanted revenge on Luke? Some things were out of control, but other things...  
  
It was a step. It was a step. Kylo could assure himself of that. He could comfort himself with that. He’d sent his coded message to Poe. He was the leader of the Resistance. He deserved to know.   
  
The forest was too bright, too sunny. Kylo wondered, absently, if there was some sort of symbolism there. If there was something to be said for all that sun, all that brightness.  
  
Poe emerged. Kylo could only imagine that that look he gave Kylo — a mixture of anger, of relief, of confusion and need for him...well, it was something that he supposed he deserved. Especially the anger part.   
  
“You came back,” he said.   
  
“And you were waiting?” Kylo said.   
  
“I waited for you for seven years.” Poe’s voice cracked in that moment, and Kylo wished, more than anything, that he wasn’t responsible for this. “I was always waiting for you.”  
  
“I didn’t think anyone would want me back.” Kylo thought back to one of Snoke’s sneering remarks. _You can’t go back to him, young Solo. He’d hardly want you after what you’ve done. We’re all unwanted._  
  
“Idiot.” Poe’s voice was soft, though. He stepped forward, if tentatively. "You’re an idiot.”  
  
“Guilty as charged. But...I am sorry.”  
  
Poe paused. He seemed to be at a loss for words, struggling between anger, gentleness — didn’t everyone get angry at those they loved? Assuming, of course, Poe still loved him. Thought anything at all of him — and then...  
  
“I can’t hate you,” he said. “I mean, I’m mad at you. I can’t say otherwise. You did hurt me, Ben,” and Kylo’s heart aches more at that statement than the use of his old name, “More than you think.”  
  
“I did. And...” He told Poe the truth. The way Poe looked, it was like he didn’t know what to think when Kylo finished.  
  
“I’m not looking for pity,” Kylo said. “I don’t deserve...”  
  
“Last I checked, pity’s given anyway. Whether someone ‘deserves’ it or not.”  
  
“Stars...” There’s a lot Kylo wants to say after that. Things like I-needed-you-by-my-side and I-was-an-idiot and maybe more than that. So much more.   
  
“Let me help.” Poe’s fingers drift over the thin line of the scar that Rey left behind. “I wasn’t there to save you from your nightmares the first time. I can do that again.”  
  
Kylo takes Poe’s hand. There’s a moment, he thinks, where he wants to kiss the fingers of Poe’s hand. Maybe the wrist. He wants to kiss the place he knows an interrogation scar was, as an apology for what he let happen as well as what he did.   
  
“I’d like that,” he says. “I did miss you.”  
  
“I missed you too.”  
  
“I know.”


End file.
